The helicopter's wreckage was discovered yesterday on a mountain in the Yamal Peninsula, the northernmost part of the Yamalo Nenets Autonomous Area, but helicopters were unable to safely land on the mountain to investigate.
"Rescuers reached and identified the helicopter today. All six people on board - the pilots and researchers - have been found dead," a spokesperson for the regional emergencies department said.
Contact with the helicopter, carrying scientists from an aero-geophysics center involved in a geomagnetic research, was lost a few hours after it took off from the village of Shchuchye, 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the autonomous area's administrative center, Salekhard.
The spokesperson said investigators have yet to recover flight data recorders to establish the cause of the crash. The wreckage is on the Khanmei mountain, at a height of 1,333 meters (4,400 feet) above sea level.
Crashes of Mi-8 Hip transport helicopters, first introduced to the Soviet Air Force in the late 1960s, are a relatively common occurrence in Russia. Several accidents involving the helicopter have occurred in recent months.
Six people including two Polish tourists died following a crash of an Mi-8 in the Magadan Region in Russia's Far East last Saturday. On Tuesday an Mi-8 helicopter crashed in the Tomsk Region in west Siberia, injuring at least 11 people. An Mi-8 crashed in the Yamalo Nenets Autonomous Area in early July, but all passengers and crew survived. In early July a pilot was killed and another injured when an Mi-8 Russian border guard helicopter crashed near the Estonian border.
